What Whiteness Means in the Trump Era

By Nell Irvin Painter

Nov. 12, 2016

Credit...Angie Wang

Donald J. Trump campaigned on the slogan “Make America Great Again,” a phrase whose “great” was widely heard as “white.” Certainly the election has been analyzed as a victory for white Christian Americans, especially men. Against Mr. Trump were all the rest of us: professionals with advanced degrees and the multiracial, multiethnic millions.

Though white Americans differed sharply on their preferences for president, the election of 2016 marked a turning point in white identity. Thanks to the success of “Make America Great Again” as a call for a return to the times when white people ruled, and thanks to the widespread analysis of voters’ preferences in racial terms, white identity became marked as a racial identity. From being individuals expressing individual preferences in life and politics, the Trump era stamps white Americans with race: white race.

I don’t mean that Americans suddenly started counting people as “white.” This has been going on since the first federal census of 1790, which enumerated three categories of white people (“Free white Males of sixteen years and upwards, including heads of families,” “Free white Males under sixteen years” and “Free white Females”). That census also tabulated two other categories: “All other free persons” and “Slaves.” Period. Black was not marked. Since 1790, population statistics have faithfully recognized a category of “white” people, sometimes more than one, especially native- and nonnative born. So I don’t mean that Americans suddenly discovered the category of white in 2016.

I’m saying that what it means to see yourself as white has fundamentally changed, from unmarked default to racially marked, a change now widely visible: from of course being president and of course being beauty queen and of course being the cute young people selling things in ads to having to make space for other, nonwhite people to fill those roles.

We have been seeing this change in popular culture and in higher education over the course of the last decades. Black and brown and Asian people sell you financial instruments and clothing. The president and first lady are black. Your college literature course includes Toni Morrison and Junot Díaz. But if you haven’t gone to college, where multiculturalism has been making its way for a generation, and if your version of America was formed in school in the 20th century, and that 20th-century image remains in your consciousness, you may have a lot to lose.

In our racially oriented American society, this change marks a demotion for white people. From assumed domination, they now take their place among the multiracial American millions. For Trump supporters embracing the social dimension of “Make America Great Again,” their vote enacted a visceral “No!” to multicultural America. As if to say, “Take us back to the time of unmarked whiteness and racially unmarked power” assumed to be white.

In the Trump administration, white men will be in charge (virtually his entire transition team, and practically every name offered for a potential cabinet post, is a white man). You could say that’s nothing new, that white men have been in charge forever. This is true, but now with a gigantic difference. This time the white men in charge will not simply happen to be white; they will be governing as white, as taking America back, back to before multiculturalism.

Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign’s leadership and support complicate making America great again, on account of the campaign’s tilt toward white nationalism. Here lies a snare that has entrapped white identity for decades. White nationalism scares many ordinary white people away from embracing whiteness, which white nationalism makes appear bigoted and terroristic. Given the people who emphasize their white racial identity — white nationalists, Nazis, Klansmen and so on — the white race is a spoiled identity. Embracing whiteness would seem to enmesh one in a history of slave-owning and all the discrimination flowing from it. What righteous person would want to embrace that? Up to now, there’s hardly been a pressing need to do so, for a fundamental dimension of white American identity has been individuality.

Conveniently, for most white Americans, being white has meant not having a racial identity. It means being and living and experiencing the world as an individual and not having to think about your race. It has meant being free of race. Some people are proud white nationalists, but probably not many of the millions who voted for Donald Trump. Thinking in terms of community would seem to be the job of black people. The Trump campaign has disrupted that easy freedom.

By elevating Steve Bannon of Breitbart News into its leadership and not vigorously forswearing white nationalist support, the Trump campaign enmeshed “Make America Great Again” with white nationalism. As whiteness emerges as an American racial identity, this constitutes a problem. Who defines American whiteness right now? Does Mr. Bannon define what it means to be white, a definition not as an individual in the default category of American? How will white people who didn’t support Mr. Trump in 2016 construe their identity as white people when Trumpists, including white nationalists, Nazis, Klansmen and Mr. Bannon, have posted the markers?

Here’s a further question about white American identity in the wake of “Make America Great Again.” Mr. Trump did not win a majority of popular votes. Even if he had, the population he will have to govern far exceeds his supporters. Given this minority basis of support, what might a Trump administration portend?

The federal government’s jurisdiction encompasses a country of more than 320 million multicolored, multireligious people in rural areas, towns and cities, spanning 3.8 million square miles. If President Trump is to govern all of us, he will have to take on issues he never imagined and unimaginable complications, even on his pet issues of bringing back jobs. Whose jobs? Where? At what cost, and who’s paying? What happens if Mr. Trump does try to address his supporters’ economic grievances, even if only among white people? There are millions of them all over the place, with interests that hardly align with those of Republican elites.

What happens if Mr. Trump’s people discover you can’t just give away public lands and trash Native American sacred grounds without a huge push back? What if Mormons won’t go along and get along, morally and ethically, with Mr. Trump’s agenda? As president, Mr. Trump’s going to have to move beyond his white and heavily male electorate and face up to conflicts of interest even within his core. A Trump supporter in Atlanta warned the president-elect: Break your promises at your peril.

I will not be surprised if the need to govern all of us alienates his base. And I will not be surprised if being president of a huge, multiracial, multiethnic democracy turns many of his supporters against him as a traitor to their values — perhaps, even, as a traitor to their race.